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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of By Proxy, by Gordon Randall Garrett
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: By Proxy
+
+Author: Gordon Randall Garrett
+
+Illustrator: H. R. van Dongen
+
+Release Date: February 27, 2008 [EBook #24707]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BY PROXY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Bruce Albrecht, Stephen Blundell
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+ BY
+ PROXY
+
+ By DAVID GORDON
+
+ _It's been said that the act of
+ creation is a solitary thing--that
+ teams never create; only individuals.
+ But sometimes a team may be needed
+ to make creation effective...._
+
+ Illustrated by Van Dongen
+
+
+Mr. Terrence Elshawe did not conform to the mental picture that pops
+into the average person's mind when he hears the words "news reporter."
+Automatically, one thinks of the general run of earnest, handsome,
+firm-jawed, level-eyed, smooth-voiced gentlemen one sees on one's TV
+screen. No matter which news service one subscribes to, the reporters
+are all pretty much of a type. And Terrence Elshawe simply wasn't the
+type.
+
+The confusion arises because thirty-odd years of television has resulted
+in specialization. If you run up much Magnum Telenews time on your
+meter, you're familiar with the cultured voice and rugged good looks of
+Brett Maxon, "your Magnum reporter," but Maxon is a reporter only in the
+very literal sense of the word. He's an actor, whose sole job is to make
+Magnum news sound more interesting than some other telenews service,
+even though he's giving you exactly the same facts. But he doesn't go
+out and dig up those stories.
+
+The actual leg work of getting the news into Maxon's hands so that he
+can report it to you is done by research reporters--men like Terrence
+Elshawe.
+
+Elshawe was a small, lean man with a large, round head on which grew
+close-cropped, light brown hair. His mouth was wide and full-lipped, and
+had a distinct tendency to grin impishly, even when he was trying to
+look serious. His eyes were large, blue, and innocent; only when the
+light hit them at just the right angle was it possible to detect the
+contact lenses which corrected an acute myopia.
+
+When he was deep in thought, he had a habit of relaxing in his desk
+chair with his head back and his eyes closed. His left arm would be
+across his chest, his left hand cupping his right elbow, while the right
+hand held the bowl of a large-bowled briar which Elshawe puffed
+methodically during his ruminations. He was in exactly that position
+when Oler Winstein put his head in the door of Elshawe's office.
+
+"Busy?" Winstein asked conversationally.
+
+In some offices, if the boss comes in and finds an employee in a pose
+like that, there would be a flurry of sudden action on the part of the
+employee as he tried frantically to look as though he had only paused
+for a moment from his busy work. Elshawe's only reaction was to open his
+eyes. He wasn't the kind of man who would put on a phony act like that,
+even if his boss fired him on the spot.
+
+"Not particularly," he said, in his slow, easy drawl. "What's up?"
+
+Winstein came on into the office. "I've got something that might make a
+good spot. See what you think."
+
+If Elshawe didn't conform to the stereotype of a reporter, so much less
+did Oler Winstein conform to the stereotype of a top-flight TV magnate.
+He was no taller than Elshawe's five-seven, and was only slightly
+heavier. He wore his hair in a crew cut, and his boyish face made him
+look more like a graduate student at a university than the man who had
+put Magnum Telenews together with his own hands. He had an office, but
+he couldn't be found in it more than half the time; the rest of the
+time, he was prowling around the Magnum Building, wandering into studios
+and offices and workshops. He wasn't checking up on his employees, and
+never gave the impression that he was. He didn't throw his weight
+around and he didn't snoop. If he hired a man for a job, he expected the
+job to be done, that was all. If it was, the man could sleep at his desk
+or play solitaire or drink beer for all Winstein cared; if the work
+wasn't done, it didn't matter if the culprit looked as busy as an
+anteater at a picnic--he got one warning and then the sack. The only
+reason for Winstein's prowling around was the way his mind worked; it
+was forever bubbling with ideas, and he wanted to bounce those ideas off
+other people to see if anything new and worthwhile would come of them.
+
+He didn't look particularly excited, but, then, he rarely did. Even the
+most objective of employees is likely to become biased one way or
+another if he thinks his boss is particularly enthusiastic about an
+idea. Winstein didn't want yes-men around him; he wanted men who could
+and would think. And he had a theory that, while the tenseness of an
+emergency could and did produce some very high-powered thinking indeed,
+an atmosphere of that kind wasn't a good thing for day-in-and-day-out
+work. He saved that kind of pressure for the times that he needed it, so
+that it was effective because of its contrast with normal procedure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Elshawe took his heavy briar out of his mouth as Winstein sat down on
+the corner of the desk. "You have a gleam in your eye, Ole," he said
+accusingly.
+
+"Maybe," Winstein said noncommittally. "We might be able to work
+something out of it. Remember a guy by the name of Malcom Porter?"
+
+Elshawe lowered his brows in a thoughtful frown. "Name's familiar. Wait
+a second. Wasn't he the guy that was sent to prison back in 1979 for
+sending up an unauthorized rocket?"
+
+Winstein nodded. "That's him. Served two years of a five-year sentence,
+got out on parole about a year ago. I just got word from a confidential
+source that he's going to try to send up another one."
+
+"I didn't know things were so pleasant at Alcatraz," Elshawe said. "He
+seems to be trying awfully hard to get back in."
+
+"Not according to what my informant says. This time, he's going to ask
+for permission. And this time, he's going to have a piloted craft, not a
+self-guided missile, like he did in '79."
+
+"Ho_ho_. Well, there might be a story in it, but I can't see that it
+would be much of one. It isn't as if a rocket shoot were something
+unusual. The only thing unusual about it is that it's a private
+enterprise shoot instead of a Government one."
+
+Winstein said: "Might be more to it than that. Do you remember the trial
+in '79?"
+
+"Vaguely. As I remember it, he claimed he didn't send up a rocket, but
+the evidence showed overwhelmingly that he had. The jury wasn't out
+more than a few minutes, as I remember."
+
+"There was a little more to it than that," Winstein said.
+
+"I was in South Africa at the time," Elshawe said. "Covering the civil
+war down there, remember?"
+
+"That's right. You're excused," Winstein said, grinning. "The thing was
+that Malcom Porter didn't claim he hadn't sent the thing up. What he did
+claim was that it wasn't a rocket. He claimed that he had a new kind of
+drive in it--something that didn't use rockets.
+
+"The Army picked the thing up on their radar screens, going straight up
+at high acceleration. They bracketed it with Cobra pursuit rockets and
+blew it out of the sky when it didn't respond to identification signals.
+They could trace the thing back to its launching pad, of course, and
+they nabbed Malcom Porter.
+
+"Porter was furious. Wanted to slap a suit against the Government for
+wanton destruction of private property. His claim was that the law
+forbids unauthorized rocket tests all right, but his missile wasn't
+illegal because it wasn't a rocket."
+
+"What did he claim it was?" Elshawe asked.
+
+"He said it was a secret device of his own invention. Antigravity, or
+something like that."
+
+"Did he try to prove it?"
+
+"No. The Court agreed that, according to the way the law is worded, only
+'rocket-propelled missiles' come under the ban. The judge said that if
+Malcom Porter could prove that the missile wasn't rocket-propelled, he'd
+dismiss the case. But Porter wanted to prove it by building another
+missile. He wouldn't give the court his plans or specifications for the
+drive he claimed he'd invented, or say anything about it except that it
+operated--and I quote--'on a new principle of physics'--unquote. Said he
+wouldn't tell them anything because the Government was simply using this
+as an excuse to take his invention away from him."
+
+Elshawe chuckled. "That's as flimsy a defense as I've heard."
+
+"Don't laugh," said Winstein. "It almost worked."
+
+"What? How?"
+
+"It threw the burden of proof on the Government. They thought they had
+him when he admitted that he'd shot the thing off, but when he denied
+that it was a rocket, then, in order to prove that he'd committed a
+crime, they had to prove that it _was_ a rocket. It wasn't up to Porter
+to prove that it _wasn't_."
+
+"Hey," Elshawe said in admiration, "that's pretty neat. I'm almost sorry
+it didn't work."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Yeah. Trouble was that the Army had blown up the evidence. They knew it
+was a rocket, but they had to prove it. They had recordings of the radar
+picture, of course, and they used that to show the shape and
+acceleration of the missile. They proved that he'd bought an old
+obsolete Odin rocket from one of the small colleges in the Midwest--one
+that the Army had sold them as a demonstration model for their rocket
+engineering classes. They proved that he had a small liquid air plant
+out there at his place in New Mexico. In other words, they proved that
+he had the equipment to rebuild the rocket and the fuel to run it.
+
+"Then they got a battery of high-powered physicists up on the stands to
+prove that nothing else but a rocket could have driven the thing that
+way.
+
+"Porter's attorney hammered at them in cross-examination, trying to get
+one of them to admit that it was possible that Porter had discovered a
+new principle of physics that could fly a missile without rockets, but
+the Attorney General's prosecutor had coached them pretty well. They all
+said that unless there was evidence to the contrary, they could not
+admit that there was such a principle.
+
+"When the prosecutor presented his case to the jury, he really had
+himself a ball. I'll give you a transcript of the trial later; you'll
+have to read it for yourself to get the real flavor of it. The gist of
+it was that things had come to a pretty pass if a man could claim a
+scientific principle known only to himself as a defense against a crime.
+
+"He gave one analogy I liked. He said, suppose that a man is found
+speeding in a car. The cops find him all alone, behind the wheel, when
+they chase him down. Then, in court, he admits that he was alone, and
+that the car was speeding, but he insists that the car was steering
+itself, and that he wasn't in control of the vehicle at all. And what
+was steering the car? Why, a new scientific principle, of course."
+
+Elshawe burst out laughing. "Wow! No wonder the jury didn't stay out
+long! I'm going to have to dig the recordings of the newscasts out of
+the files; I missed a real comedy while I was in Africa."
+
+Winstein nodded. "We got pretty good coverage on it, but our worthy
+competitor, whose name I will not have mentioned within these sacred
+halls, got Beebee Vayne to run a commentary on it, and we got beat out
+on the meters."
+
+"Vayne?" Elshawe was still grinning. "That's a new twist--getting a
+comedian to do a news report."
+
+"I'll have to admit that my worthy competitor, whose name et cetera,
+does get an idea once in a while. But I don't want him beating us out
+again. We're in on the ground floor this time, and I want to hog the
+whole thing if I can."
+
+"Sounds like a great idea, if we can swing it," Elshawe agreed. "Do you
+have a new gimmick? You're not going to get a comedian to do it, are
+you?"
+
+"Heaven forbid! Even if it had been my own idea three years ago, I
+wouldn't repeat it, and I certainly won't have it said that I copy my
+competitors. No, what I want you to do is go out there and find out
+what's going on. Get a full background on it. We'll figure out the
+presentation angle when we get some idea of what he's going to do this
+time." Winstein eased himself off the corner of Elshawe's desk and
+stood up. "By the way--"
+
+"Yeah?"
+
+"Play it straight when you go out there. You're a reporter, looking for
+news; you haven't made any previous judgments."
+
+Elshawe's pipe had gone out. He fired it up again with his desk lighter.
+"I don't want to be," he said between puffs, "too cagey. If he's got ...
+any brains ... he'll know it's ... a phony act ... if I overdo it." He
+snapped off the lighter and looked at his employer through a cloud of
+blue-gray smoke. "I mean, after all, he's on the records as being a
+crackpot. I'd be a pretty stupid reporter if I believed everything he
+said. If I don't act a little skeptical, he'll think I'm either a
+blockhead or a phony or both."
+
+"Maybe," Winstein said doubtfully. "Still, some of these crackpots fly
+off the handle if you doubt their word in the least bit."
+
+"I'll tell you what I'll do," Elshawe said. "He used to live here in New
+York, didn't he?"
+
+"Still does," Winstein said. "He has a two-floor apartment on Central
+Park West. He just uses that New Mexico ranch of his for relaxation."
+
+"He's not hurting for money, is he?" Elshawe asked at random. "Anyway,
+what I'll do is look up some of the people he knows and get an idea of
+what kind of a bird he is. Then, when I get out there, I'll know more
+what kind of line to feed him."
+
+"That sounds good. But whatever you do, play it on the soft side. My
+confidential informant tells me that the only reason we're getting this
+inside info is because Malcom Porter is sore about the way our
+competition treated him four years ago."
+
+"Just who is this confidential informant, anyway, Ole?" Elshawe asked
+curiously.
+
+Winstein grinned widely. "It's supposed to be very confidential. I don't
+want it to get any further than you."
+
+"Sure not. Since when am I a blabbermouth? Who is it?"
+
+"Malcom Porter."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two days later, Terrence Elshawe was sitting in the front seat of a big
+station wagon, watching the scenery go by and listening to the driver
+talk as the machine tooled its way out of Silver City, New Mexico, and
+headed up into the Mogollon Mountains.
+
+"Was a time, not too long back," the driver was saying, "when a man
+couldn't get up into this part of the country 'thout a pack mule. Still
+places y'can't, but the boss had t' have a road built up to the ranch
+so's he could bring in all that heavy equipment. Reckon one of these
+days the Mogollons 'll be so civilized and full a people that a fella
+might as well live in New York."
+
+Elshawe, who hadn't seen another human being for fifteen minutes, felt
+that the predicted overcrowding was still some time off.
+
+"'Course," the driver went on, "I reckon folks have t' live some place,
+but I never could see why human bein's are so all-fired determined to
+bunch theirselves up so thick together that they can't hardly move--like
+a bunch of sheep in a snowstorm. It don't make sense to me. Does it to
+you, Mr. Skinner?"
+
+That last was addressed to the other passenger, an elderly man who was
+sitting in the seat behind Elshawe.
+
+"I guess it's pretty much a matter of taste, Bill," Mr. Skinner said in
+a soft voice.
+
+"I reckon," Bill said, in a tone that implied that anyone whose tastes
+were so bad that he wanted to live in the city was an object of pity who
+probably needed psychiatric treatment. He was silent for a moment, in
+obvious commiseration with his less fortunate fellows.
+
+Elshawe took the opportunity to try to get a word in. The chunky
+Westerner had picked him up at the airport, along with Mr. Samuel
+Skinner, who had come in on the same plane with Elshawe, and, after
+introducing himself as Bill Rodriguez, he had kept up a steady stream of
+chatter ever since. Elshawe didn't feel he should take a chance on
+passing up the sudden silence.
+
+"By the way; has Mr. Porter applied to the Government for permission to
+test his ... uh ... his ship, yet?"
+
+Bill Rodriguez didn't take his eyes off the winding road. "Well, now, I
+don't rightly know, Mr. Elshawe. Y'see, I just work on the ranch up
+there. I don't have a doggone thing to do with the lab'r'tory at
+all--'cept to keep the fence in good shape so's the stock don't get into
+the lab'r'tory area. If Mr. Porter wants me to know somethin', he tells
+me, an' if he don't, why, I don't reckon it's any a my business."
+
+"I see," said Elshawe. _And that shuts_ me _up_, he thought to himself.
+He took out his pipe and began to fill it in silence.
+
+"How's everything out in Los Angeles, Mr. Skinner?" Rodriguez asked the
+passenger in back. "Haven't seen you in quite a spell."
+
+Elshawe listened to the conversation between the two with half an ear
+and smoked his pipe wordlessly.
+
+He had spent the previous day getting all the information he could on
+Malcom Porter, and the information hadn't been dull by any means.
+
+Porter had been born in New York in 1949, which made him just barely
+thirty-three. His father, Vanneman Porter, had been an oddball in his
+own way, too. The Porters of New York didn't quite date back to the time
+of Peter Stuyvesant, but they had been around long enough to acquire the
+feeling that the twenty-four dollars that had been paid for Manhattan
+Island had come out of the family exchequer. Just as the Vanderbilts
+looked upon the Rockefellers as newcomers, so the Porters looked on the
+Vanderbilts.
+
+For generations, it had been tacitly conceded that a young Porter
+gentleman had only three courses of action open to him when it came time
+for him to choose his vocation in life. He could join the firm of
+Porter & Sons on Wall Street, or he could join some other respectable
+business or banking enterprise, or he could take up the Law.
+(Corporation law, of course--_never_ criminal law.) For those few who
+felt that the business world was not for them, there was a fourth
+alternative--studying for the priesthood of the Episcopal Church.
+Anything else was unheard of.
+
+So it had been somewhat of a shock to Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton Porter when
+their only son, Vanneman, had announced that he intended to study
+physics at M.I.T. But they gave their permission; they were quite
+certain that the dear boy would "come to his senses" and join the firm
+after he had been graduated. He was, after all, the only one to carry on
+the family name and manage the family holdings.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+But Vanneman Porter not only stuck to his guns and went on to a Ph.D.;
+he compounded his delinquency by marrying a pretty, sweet, but not
+overly bright girl named Mary Kelley.
+
+Malcom Porter was their son.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Malcom was ten years old, both his parents were killed in a smashup
+on the New Jersey Turnpike, and the child went to live with his widowed
+grandmother, Mrs. Hamilton Porter.
+
+Terry Elshawe had gathered that young Malcom Porter's life had not been
+exactly idyllic from that point on. Grandmother Porter hadn't approved
+of her son's marriage, and she seemed to have felt that she must do
+everything in her power to help her grandson overcome the handicap of
+having nonaristocratic blood in his veins.
+
+Elshawe wasn't sure in his own mind whether environment or heredity had
+been the deciding factor in Malcom Porter's subsequent life, but he had
+a hunch that the two had been acting synergistically. It was likely that
+the radical change in his way of life after his tenth year had as much
+to do with his behavior as the possibility that the undeniably brilliant
+mental characteristics of the Porter family had been modified by the
+genes of the pretty but scatter-brained wife of Vanneman Porter.
+
+Three times, only his grandmother's influence kept him from being
+expelled from the exclusive prep school she had enrolled him in, and his
+final grades were nothing to mention in polite society, much less boast
+about.
+
+In her own way, the old lady was trying to do her best for him, but she
+had found it difficult to understand her own son, and his deviations
+from the Porter norm had been slight in comparison with those of his
+son. When the time came for Malcom to enter college, Grandmother Porter
+was at a total loss as to what to do. With his record, it was unlikely
+that any law school would take him unless he showed tremendous
+improvement in his pre-law courses. And unless that improvement was a
+general one, not only as far as his studies were concerned, but in his
+handling of his personal life, it would be commercial suicide to put him
+in any position of trust with Porter & Sons. It wasn't that he was
+dishonest; he simply couldn't be trusted to do anything properly. He had
+a tendency to follow his own whims and ignore everybody else.
+
+The idea of his entering the clergy was never even considered.
+
+It came almost as a relief to the old woman when Malcom announced that
+he was going to study physics, as his father had done.
+
+The relief didn't last long. By the time Malcom was in his sophomore
+year, he was apparently convinced that his instructors were dunderheads
+to the last man. That, Elshawe thought, was probably not unusual among
+college students, but Malcom Porter made the mistake of telling them
+about it.
+
+One of the professors with whom Elshawe had talked had said: "He acted
+as though he owned the college. That, I think, was what was his trouble
+in his studies; he wasn't really stupid, and he wasn't as lazy as some
+said, but he didn't want to be bothered with anything that he didn't
+enjoy. The experiments he liked, for instance, were the showy,
+spectacular ones. He built himself a Tesla coil, and a table with hidden
+AC electromagnets in it that would make a metal plate float in the air.
+But when it came to nucleonics, he was bored. Anything less than a
+thermonuclear bomb wasn't any fun."
+
+The trouble was that he called his instructors stupid and dull for being
+interested in "commonplace stuff," and it infuriated him to be forced to
+study such "junk."
+
+As a result, he managed to get himself booted out of college toward the
+end of his junior year. And that was the end of his formal education.
+
+Six months after that, his grandmother died. Although she had married
+into the Porter family, she was fiercely proud of the name; she had been
+born a Van Courtland, so she knew what family pride was. And the
+realization that Malcom was the last of the Porters--and a failure--was
+more than she could bear. The coronary attack she suffered should have
+been cured in a week, but the best medico-surgical techniques on Earth
+can't help a woman who doesn't want to live.
+
+Her will showed exactly what she thought of Malcom Porter. The Porter
+holdings were placed in trust. Malcom was to have the earnings, but he
+had no voice whatever in control of the principal until he was fifty
+years of age.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Instead of being angry, Malcom was perfectly happy. He had an income
+that exceeded a million dollars before taxes, and didn't need to worry
+about the dull details of making money. He formed a small corporation of
+his own, Porter Research Associates, and financed it with his own money.
+It ran deep in the red, but Porter didn't mind; Porter Research
+Associates was a hobby, not a business, and running at a deficit saved
+him plenty in taxes.
+
+By the time he was twenty-five, he was known as a crackpot. He had a
+motley crew of technicians and scientists working for him--some with
+Ph.D.'s, some with a trade-school education. The personnel turnover in
+that little group was on a par with the turnover of patients in a
+maternity ward, at least as far as genuine scientists were concerned.
+Porter concocted theories and hypotheses out of cobwebs and became
+furious with anyone who tried to tear them down. If evidence came up
+that would tend to show that one of his pet theories was utter hogwash,
+he'd come up with an _ad hoc_ explanation which showed that this
+particular bit of evidence was an exception. He insisted that "the basis
+of science lies in the experimental evidence, not in the pronouncements
+of authorities," which meant that any recourse to the theories of
+Einstein, Pauli, Dirac, Bohr, or Fermi was as silly as quoting
+Aristotle, Plato, or St. Thomas Aquinas. The only authority he would
+accept was Malcom Porter.
+
+Nobody who had had any training in science could work long with a man
+like that, even if the pay had been high, which it wasn't. The only
+people who could stick with him were the skilled workers--the welders,
+tool-and-die men, electricians, and junior engineers, who didn't care
+much about theories as long as they got the work done. They listened
+respectfully to what Porter had to say and then built the gadgets he
+told them to build. If the gadgets didn't work the way Porter expected
+them to, Porter would fuss and fidget with them until he got tired of
+them, then he would junk them and try something else. He never blamed a
+technician who had followed orders. Since the salaries he paid were
+proportional to the man's "ability and loyalty"--judged, of course, by
+Porter's own standards--he soon had a group of technician-artisans who
+knew that their personal security rested with Malcom Porter, and that
+personal loyalty was more important than the ability to utilize the
+scientific method.
+
+Not everything that Porter had done was a one-hundred-per cent failure.
+He had managed to come up with a few basic improvements, patented them,
+and licensed them out to various manufacturers. But these were purely an
+accidental by-product. Malcom Porter was interested in "basic research"
+and not much else, it seemed.
+
+He had written papers and books, but they had been uniformly rejected by
+the scientific journals, and those he had had published himself were on
+a par with the writings of Immanuel Velikovsky and George Adamski.
+
+And now he was going to shoot a rocket--or whatever it was--to the moon.
+Well, Elshawe thought, if it went off as scheduled, it would at least be
+worth watching. Elshawe was a rocket buff; he'd watched a dozen or more
+moon shots in his life--everything from the automatic supply-carriers to
+the three-man passenger rockets that added to the personnel of Moon Base
+One--and he never tired of watching the bellowing monsters climb up
+skywards on their white-hot pillars of flame.
+
+And if nothing happened, Elshawe decided, he'd at least get a laugh out
+of the whole episode.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After nearly two hours of driving, Bill Rodriguez finally turned off the
+main road onto an asphalt road that climbed steeply into the pine forest
+that surrounded it. A sign said: _Double Horseshoe Ranch--Private
+Road--No Trespassing_.
+
+Elshawe had always thought of a ranch as a huge spread of flat prairie
+land full of cattle and gun-toting cowpokes on horseback; a mountainside
+full of sheep just didn't fit into that picture.
+
+After a half mile or so, the station wagon came to a high metal-mesh
+fence that blocked the road. On the big gate, another sign proclaimed
+that the area beyond was private property and that trespassers would be
+prosecuted.
+
+Bill Rodriguez stopped the car, got out, and walked over to the gate. He
+pressed a button in one of the metal gateposts and said, "Ed? This's
+Bill. I got Mr. Skinner and that New York reporter with me."
+
+After a slight pause, there was a metallic click, and the gate swung
+open. Rodriguez came back to the car, got in, and drove on through the
+gate. Elshawe twisted his head to watch the big gate swing shut behind
+them.
+
+After another ten minutes, Rodriguez swung off the road onto another
+side road, and ten minutes after that the station wagon went over a
+small rise and headed down into a small valley. In the middle of it,
+shining like bright aluminum in the sun, was a vessel.
+
+_Now I know Porter is nuts_, Elshawe thought wryly.
+
+Because the vessel, whatever it was, was parallel to the ground, looking
+like the fuselage of a stratojet, minus wings and tail, sitting on its
+landing gear. Nowhere was there any sign of a launching pad, with its
+gantries and cranes and jet baffles. Nor was there any sign of a rocket
+motor on the vessel itself.
+
+As the station wagon approached the cluster of buildings a hundred yards
+this side of the machine, Elshawe realized with shock that the thing
+_was_ a stripped-down stratojet--an old Grumman _Supernova_, _circa_
+1970.
+
+"Well, Elijah got there by sitting in an iron chair and throwing a
+magnet out in front of himself," Elshawe said, "so what the hell."
+
+"What?" Rodriguez asked blankly.
+
+"Nothing; just thinking out loud. Sorry."
+
+Behind Elshawe, Mr. Skinner chuckled softly, but said nothing.
+
+When the station wagon pulled up next to one of the cluster of white
+prefab buildings, Malcom Porter himself stepped out of the wide door and
+walked toward them.
+
+Elshawe recognized the man from his pictures--tall, wide-shouldered,
+dark-haired, and almost handsome, he didn't look much like a wild-eyed
+crackpot. He greeted Rodriguez and Skinner rather peremptorily, but he
+smiled broadly and held out his hand to Elshawe.
+
+"Mr. Elshawe? I'm Malcom Porter." His grip was firm and friendly. "I'm
+glad to see you. Glad you could make it."
+
+"Glad to be here, Dr. Porter," Elshawe said in his best manner. "It's
+quite a privilege." He knew that Porter liked to be called "Doctor"; all
+his subordinates called him that.
+
+But, surprisingly, Porter said: "Not 'Doctor,' Mr. Elshawe; just
+'Mister.' My boys like to call me 'Doctor,' but it's sort of a nickname.
+I don't have a degree, and I don't claim one. I don't want the public
+thinking I'm claiming to be something I'm not."
+
+"I understand, Mr. Porter."
+
+Bill Rodriguez's voice broke in. "Where do you want me to put all this
+stuff, Doc?" He had unloaded Elshawe's baggage from the station wagon
+and set it carefully on the ground. Skinner picked up his single
+suitcase and looked at Porter inquiringly.
+
+"My usual room, Malcom?"
+
+"Yeah. Sure, Sam; sure." As Skinner walked off toward one of the other
+buildings, Porter said: "Quite a load of baggage you have there, Mr.
+Elshawe. Recording equipment?"
+
+"Most of it," the reporter admitted. "Recording TV cameras, 16mm movie
+cameras, tape recorders, 35mm still cameras--the works. I wanted to get
+good coverage, and if you've got any men that you won't be using during
+the take-off, I'd like to borrow them to help me operate this stuff."
+
+"Certainly; certainly. Come on, Bill, let's get this stuff over to Mr.
+Elshawe's suite."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The suite consisted of three rooms, all very nicely appointed for a
+place as far out in the wilderness as this. When Elshawe got his
+equipment stowed away, Porter invited him to come out and take a look at
+his pride and joy.
+
+"The first real spaceship, Elshawe," he said energetically. "The first
+real spaceship. The rocket is no more a spaceship than a rowboat is an
+ocean-going vessel." He gestured toward the sleek, shining, metal ship.
+"Of course, it's only a pilot model, you might say. I don't have
+hundreds of millions of dollars to spend; I had to make do with what I
+could afford. That's an old Grumman _Supernova_ stratojet. I got it
+fairly cheap because I told 'em I didn't want the engines or the wings
+or the tail assembly.
+
+"But she'll do the job, all right. Isn't she a beauty?"
+
+Elshawe had his small pocket recorder going; he might as well get all
+this down. "Mr. Porter," he asked carefully, "just how does this vessel
+propel itself? I understand that, at the trial, it was said that you
+claimed it was an antigravity device, but that you denied it."
+
+"Those idiots!" Porter exploded angrily. "Nobody understood what I was
+talking about because they wouldn't listen! Antigravity! _Pfui!_ When
+they learned how to harness electricity, did they call it
+anti-electricity? When they built the first atomic reactor, did they
+call it anti-atomic energy? A rocket works against gravity, but they
+don't call _that_ antigravity, do they? My device works _with_ gravity,
+not against it."
+
+"What sort of device is it?" Elshawe asked.
+
+"I call it the Gravito-Inertial Differential Polarizer," Porter said
+importantly.
+
+Elshawe was trying to frame his next question when Porter said: "I know
+the name doesn't tell you much, but then, names never do, do they? You
+know what a transformer does, but what does the name by itself convey?
+Nothing, unless you know what it does in the first place. A cyclotron
+cycles something, but what? A broadcaster casts something abroad--what?
+And how?"
+
+"I see. And the 'how' and 'what' is your secret, eh?"
+
+"Partly. I can give you a little information, though. Suppose there were
+only one planet in all space, and you were standing on its surface.
+Could you tell if the planet were spinning or not? And, if so, how fast?
+Sure you could; you could measure the so-called centrifugal force. The
+same thing goes for a proton or electron or neutron or even a neutrino.
+But, if it _is_ spinning, what is the spin relative to? To the particle
+itself? That's obvious nonsense. Therefore, what is commonly called
+'inertia' is as much a property of so-called 'empty space' as it is a
+property of matter. My device simply utilizes spatial inertia by
+polarizing it against the matter inertia of the ship, that's all."
+
+"Hm-m-m," said Elshawe. As far as his own knowledge of science went,
+that statement made no sense whatever. But the man's manner was
+persuasive. Talking to him, Elshawe began to have the feeling that
+Porter not only knew what he was talking about, but could actually do
+what he said he was going to do.
+
+"What's that?" Porter asked sharply, looking up into the sky.
+
+Elshawe followed his gaze. "That" was a Cadillac aircar coming over a
+ridge in the distance, its fans making an ever-louder throaty hum as it
+approached. It settled down to an altitude of three feet as it neared,
+and floated toward them on its cushion of air. On its side, Elshawe
+could see the words, UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT, and beneath that, in
+smaller letters, _Civil Aeronautics Authority_.
+
+"Now what?" Porter muttered softly. "I haven't notified anyone of my
+intentions yet--not officially."
+
+"Sometimes those boys don't wait for official notification," Elshawe
+said.
+
+Porter glanced at him, his eyes narrowed. "You didn't say anything, did
+you?"
+
+"Look, Mr. Porter, I don't play that way," Elshawe said tightly. "As far
+as I'm concerned, this is your show; I'm just here to get the story. You
+did us a favor by giving us advance notice; why should we louse up your
+show for you?"
+
+"Sorry," Porter said brusquely. "Well, let's make a good show of it."
+
+The CAA aircar slowed to a halt, its fans died, and it settled to its
+wheels.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two neatly dressed, middle-aged men climbed out. Both were carrying
+briefcases. Porter walked briskly toward them, a warm smile on his face;
+Elshawe tagged along behind. The CAA men returned Porter's smile with
+smiles that could only be called polite and businesslike.
+
+Porter performed the introductions, and the two men identified
+themselves as Mr. Granby and Mr. Feldstein, of the Civil Aeronautics
+Authority.
+
+"Can I help you, gentlemen?" Porter asked.
+
+Granby, who was somewhat shorter, fatter, and balder than his partner,
+opened his briefcase. "We're just here on a routine check, Mr. Porter.
+If you can give us a little information...?" He let the half-question
+hang in the air as he took a sheaf of papers from his briefcase.
+
+"Anything I can do to help," Porter said.
+
+Granby, looking at the papers, said: "In 1979, I believe you purchased a
+Grumman _Supernova_ jet powered aircraft from Trans-American Airlines?
+Is that correct?"
+
+"That is correct," Porter agreed.
+
+Granby handed one of the papers to Porter. "That is a copy of the
+registration certificate. Is the registration number the same as it is
+on your copy?"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"I believe so," Porter said, looking at the number. "Yes, I'm sure it
+is."
+
+Granby nodded briskly. "According to our records, the machine was sold
+as scrap. That is to say, it was not in an airworthy condition. It was,
+in fact, sold without the engines. Is that correct?"
+
+"Correct."
+
+"May I ask if you still own the machine in question?"
+
+Porter gave the man a look that accused Granby of being stupid or blind
+or both. He pointed to the hulking fuselage of the giant aircraft.
+"There it is."
+
+Granby and Feldstein both turned to look at it as though they had never
+noticed it before. "Ah, yes," Granby said, turning back. "Well, that's
+about all there is to it." He looked at his partner. "It's obvious that
+there's no violation here, eh, Feldstein?"
+
+"Quite," said Feldstein in a staccato voice.
+
+"Violation?" Porter asked. "What violation?"
+
+"Well, nothing, really," Granby said, deprecatingly. "Just routine, as I
+said. People have been known to buy aircraft as scrap and then repair
+them and re-outfit them."
+
+"Is that illegal?" Porter asked.
+
+"No, no," said Granby hastily. "Of course not. But any ship so
+re-outfitted and repaired must pass CAA inspection before it can leave
+the ground, you understand. So we keep an eye on such transactions to
+make sure that the law isn't violated."
+
+"After three years?" Porter asked blandly.
+
+"Well ... ah ... well ... you know how it is," Granby said nervously.
+"These things take time. Sometimes ... due to ... clerical error, we
+overlook a case now and then." He glanced at his partner, then quickly
+looked back at Porter.
+
+"As a matter of fact, Mr. Porter," Feldstein said in a flat, cold voice,
+"in view of your record, we felt that the investigation at this time was
+advisable. You bought a scrap missile and used it illegally. You can
+hardly blame us for looking into this matter."
+
+"No," said Porter. He had transferred his level gaze to the taller of
+the two men, since it had suddenly become evident that Feldstein, not
+Granby, was the stronger of the two.
+
+"However," Feldstein went on, "I'm glad to see that we have no cause for
+alarm. You're obviously not fitting that up as an aircraft. By the
+way--just out of curiosity--what _are_ you doing with it?" He turned
+around to look at the big fuselage again.
+
+Porter sighed. "I had intended to hold off on this for a few days, but I
+might as well let the cat out now. I intend to take off in that ship
+this week end."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Granby's eyes opened wide, and Feldstein spun around as though someone
+had jabbed him with a needle. "_What?_"
+
+Porter simply repeated what he had said. "I had intended to make
+application to the Space Force for permission to test it," he added.
+
+Feldstein looked at him blankly for a moment.
+
+Then: "The _Space_ Force? Mr. Porter, civilian aircraft come under the
+jurisdiction of the CAA."
+
+"How's he going to fly it?" Granby asked. "No engines, no wings, no
+control surfaces. It's silly."
+
+"Rocket motors in the rear, of course," said Feldstein. "He's converted
+the thing into a rocket."
+
+"But the tail is closed," Granby objected. "There's no rocket orifice."
+
+"Dummy cover, I imagine," Feldstein said. "Right, Mr. Porter?"
+
+"Wrong," said Porter angrily. "The motive power is supplied by a
+mechanism of my own devising! It has nothing to do with rockets! It's as
+superior to rocket power as the electric motor is to the steam engine!"
+
+Feldstein and Granby glanced at each other, and an almost identical
+expression of superior smugness grew over their features. Feldstein
+looked back at Porter and said, "Mr. Porter, I assure you that it
+doesn't matter what you're using to lift that thing. You could be using
+dynamite for all I care. The law says that it can't leave the ground
+unless it's airworthy. Without wings or control surfaces, it is
+obviously not airworthy. If it is not a rocket device, then it comes
+under the jurisdiction of the Civil Aeronautics Authority, and if you
+try to take off without our permission, you'll go to jail.
+
+"If it _is_ a rocket device, then it will be up to the Space Force to
+inspect it before take-off to make sure it is not dangerous.
+
+"I might remind you, Mr. Porter, that you are on parole. You still have
+three years to serve on your last conviction. I wouldn't play around
+with rockets any more if I were you."
+
+Porter blew up. "Listen, you! I'm not going to be pushed around by you
+or anyone else! I know better than you do what Alcatraz is like, and I'm
+not going back there if I can help it. This country is still
+Constitutionally a democracy, not a bureaucracy, and I'm going to see to
+it that I get to exercise my rights!
+
+"I've invented something that's as radically new as ... as ... as the
+Law of Gravity was in the Seventeenth Century! And I'm going to get
+recognition for it, understand me?" He gestured furiously toward the
+fuselage of the old _Supernova_. "That ship is not only airworthy, but
+_space_worthy! And it's a thousand times safer and a thousand times
+better than any rocket will ever be!
+
+"For your information, Mister Smug-Face, I've already flown her!"
+
+Porter stopped, took a deep breath, compressed his lips, and then said,
+in a lower, somewhat calmer tone, "Know what she'll do? That baby will
+hang in the air just like your aircar, there--and without benefit of
+those outmoded, power-wasting blower fans, too.
+
+"Now, understand me, Mr. Feldstein: I'm not going to break any laws
+unless I have to. You and all your bureaucrat friends will have a chance
+to give me an O.K. on this test. But I warn you, brother--_I'm going to
+take that ship up!_"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Feldstein's jaw muscles had tightened at Porter's tone when he began,
+but he had relaxed by the time the millionaire had finished, and was
+even managing to look smugly tolerant. Elshawe had thumbed the button on
+his minirecorder when the conversation had begun, and he was chuckling
+mentally at the thought of what was going down on the thin,
+magnetite-impregnated, plastic thread that was hissing past the
+recording head.
+
+Feldstein said: "Mr. Porter, we came here to remind you of the law,
+nothing more. If you intend to abide by the law, fine and dandy. If not,
+you'll go back to prison.
+
+"That ship is not airworthy, and--"
+
+"How do you know it isn't?" Porter roared.
+
+"By inspection, Mr. Porter; by inspection." Feldstein looked
+exasperated. "We have certain standards to go by, and an aircraft
+without wings or control surfaces simply doesn't come up to those
+standards, that's all. Even a rocket has to have stabilizing fins." He
+paused and zipped open his briefcase.
+
+"In view of your attitude," he said, pulling out a paper, "I'm afraid I
+shall have to take official steps. This is to notify you that the
+aircraft in question has been inspected and found to be not airworthy.
+Since--"
+
+"Wait a minute!" Porter snapped. "Who are you to say so? How would you
+know?"
+
+"I happen to be an officer of the CAA," said Feldstein, obviously trying
+to control his temper. "I also happen to be a graduate aeronautical
+engineer. If you wish, I will give the ... the ... aircraft a thorough
+inspection, inside and out, and--"
+
+"Oh, no!" said Porter. His voice and his manner had suddenly become very
+gentle. "I don't think that would do much good, do you?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that you'd condemn the ship, no matter what you found inside.
+You couldn't O.K. a ship without airfoils, could you?"
+
+"Of course not," said Feldstein, "that's obvious, in the face of--"
+
+"All right, then give me the notification and forget the rest of the
+inspection." Porter held out his hand.
+
+Feldstein hesitated. "Well, now, without a complete inspection--"
+
+Again Porter interrupted. "You're not going to get a complete
+inspection, Buster," he said with a wolfish grin. "Either serve that
+paper or get off my back."
+
+Feldstein slammed the paper into Porter's hand. "That's your official
+notification! If necessary, Mr. Porter, we will be back with a Federal
+marshal! Good day, Mr. Porter. Let's go, Granby."
+
+The two of them marched back to their aircar and climbed inside. The car
+lifted with a roar of blowers and headed back over the mountains toward
+Albuquerque.
+
+But long before they were out of sight over the ridge, Malcom Porter had
+turned on his heel and started back toward the cluster of buildings. He
+was swearing vilely in a rumbling monotone, and had apparently forgotten
+all about Elshawe.
+
+The reporter followed in silence for a dozen paces, then he asked:
+"What's your next step, Mr. Porter?"
+
+Porter came to an abrupt stop, turned, and looked at Elshawe. "I'm going
+to phone General Fitzsimmons in Washington! I'm--" He stopped, scowling.
+"No, I guess I'd better phone my lawyer first. I'll find out what they
+can do and what they can't." Then he turned again and strode rapidly
+toward the nearest of the buildings.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Seventy-two hours later, Terry Elshawe was in Silver City, talking to
+his boss over a long-distance line.
+
+"... And that's the way it lines up, Ole. The CAA won't clear his ship
+for take-off, and the Space Force won't either. And if he tries it
+without the O.K. of both of them, he'll be right back in Alcatraz."
+
+"He hasn't violated his parole yet, though?" Winstein's voice came
+distantly.
+
+"No." Elshawe cursed the fact that he couldn't get a vision connection
+with New York. "But, the way he's acting, he's likely to. He's furious."
+
+"Why wouldn't he let the Space Force officers look over his ship?"
+Winstein asked. "I still don't see how that would have hurt him if he's
+really got something."
+
+"It's on the recording I sent you," Elshawe said.
+
+"I haven't played it yet," Winstein said. "Brief me."
+
+"He wouldn't let the Space Force men look at his engine or whatever it
+is because he doesn't trust them," Elshawe said. "He claims to have this
+new drive, but he doesn't want anyone to go nosing around it. The Space
+Force colonel ... what's his name? ... Manetti, that's it. Manetti asked
+Porter why, if he had a new invention, he hadn't patented it. Porter
+said that he wasn't going to patent it because that would make it
+available to every Tom, Dick, and Harry--his very words--who wanted to
+build it. Porter insists that, since it's impossible to patent the
+discovery of a new natural law, he isn't going to give away his genius
+for nothing. He said that Enrico Fermi was the prime example of what
+happened when the Government got hold of something like that when the
+individual couldn't argue."
+
+"Fermi?" Winstein asked puzzledly. "Wasn't he a physicist or something,
+back in the Forties?"
+
+"Right. He's the boy who figured out how to make the atomic bomb
+practical. But the United States Government latched onto it, and it took
+him years to get any compensation. He never did get the money that he
+was entitled to.
+
+"Porter says he wants to make sure that the same thing doesn't happen to
+him. He wants to prove that he's got something and then let the
+Government pay him what it's worth and give him the recognition he
+deserves. He says he has discovered a new natural law and devised a
+machine that utilizes that law. He isn't going to let go of his
+invention until he gets credit for everything."
+
+There was a long silence from the other end. After a minute, Elshawe
+said: "Ole? You there?"
+
+"Oh. Yeah ... sure. Just thinking. Terry, what do you think of this
+whole thing? Does Porter have something?"
+
+"Damned if I know. If I were in New York, I'd say he was a complete nut,
+but when I talk to him, I'm halfway convinced that he knows what he's
+talking about."
+
+There was another long pause. This time, Elshawe waited. Finally, Oler
+Winstein said: "You think Porter's likely to do something drastic?"
+
+"Looks like it. The CAA has already forbidden him to lift that ship. The
+Space Force flatly told him that he couldn't take off without
+permission, and they said he wouldn't get permission unless he let them
+look over his gizmo ... whatever it is."
+
+"And he refused?"
+
+"Well, he did let Colonel Manetti look it over, but the colonel said
+that, whatever the drive principle was, it wouldn't operate a ship. He
+said the engines didn't make any sense. What it boils down to is that
+the CAA thinks Porter has rockets in the ship, and the Space Force
+does, too. So they've both forbidden him to take off."
+
+"_Are_ there any rocket motors in the ship?" Winstein asked.
+
+"Not as far as I can see," Elshawe said. "He's got two big
+atomic-powered DC generators aboard--says they have to be DC to avoid
+electromagnetic effects. But the drive engines don't make any more sense
+to me than they do to Colonel Manetti."
+
+Another pause. Then: "O.K., Terry; you stick with it. If Porter tries to
+buck the Government, we've got a hell of a story if his gadget works the
+way he says it does. If it doesn't--which is more likely--then we can
+still get a story when they haul him back to the Bastille."
+
+"Check-check. I'll call you if anything happens."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He hung up and stepped out of the phone booth into the lobby of the
+Murray Hotel. Across the lobby, a glowing sign said _cocktail lounge_ in
+lower-case script.
+
+He decided that a tall cool one wouldn't hurt him any on a day like this
+and ambled over, fumbling in his pockets for pipe, tobacco pouch, and
+other paraphernalia as he went. He pushed open the door, spotted a stool
+at the bar of the dimly-lit room, went over to it and sat down.
+
+He ordered his drink and had no sooner finished than the man to his left
+said, "Good afternoon, Mr. Elshawe."
+
+The reporter turned his head toward his neighbor. "Oh, hello, Mr.
+Skinner. I didn't know you'd come to town."
+
+"I came in somewhat earlier. Couple, three hours ago." His voice had the
+careful, measured steadiness of a man who has had a little too much to
+drink and is determined not to show it. That surprised Elshawe a little;
+Skinner had struck him as a middle-aged accountant or maybe a high
+school teacher--the mild kind of man who doesn't drink at all, much less
+take a few too many.
+
+"I'm going to hire a 'copter and fly back," Elshawe said. "You're
+welcome if you want to come along."
+
+Skinner shook his head solemnly. "No. Thank you. I'm going back to Los
+Angeles this afternoon. I'm just killing time, waiting for the local
+plane to El Paso."
+
+"Oh? Well, I hope you have a good trip." Elshawe had been under the
+impression that Skinner had come to New Mexico solely to see the test of
+Porter's ship. He had wondered before how the man fitted into the
+picture, and now he was wondering why Skinner was leaving. He decided he
+might as well try to find out. "I guess you're disappointed because the
+test has been called off," he said casually.
+
+"Called off? Hah. No such thing," Skinner said. "Not by a long shot. Not
+Porter. He'll take the thing up, and if the Army doesn't shoot him down,
+the CAA will see to it that he's taken back to prison. But that won't
+stop him. Malcom Porter is determined to go down in history as a great
+scientist, and nothing is going to stop him if he can help it."
+
+"You think his spaceship will work, then?"
+
+"Work? Sure it'll work. It worked in '79; it'll work now. The way that
+drive is built, it can't help but work. I just don't want to stick
+around and watch him get in trouble again, that's all."
+
+Elshawe frowned. All the time that Porter had been in prison, his
+technicians had been getting together the stuff to build the so-called
+"spaceship," but none of them knew how it was put together or how it
+worked. Only Porter knew that, and he'd put it together after he'd been
+released on parole.
+
+But if that was so, how come Skinner, who didn't even work for Porter,
+was so knowledgeable about the drive? Or was that liquor talking?
+
+"Did you help him build it?" the reporter asked smoothly.
+
+"_Help_ him build it? Why, I--" Then Skinner stopped abruptly. "Why,
+no," he said after a moment. "No. I don't know anything about it,
+really. I just know that it worked in '79, that's all." He finished his
+drink and got off his stool. "Well, I've got to be going. Nice talking
+to you. Hope I see you again sometime."
+
+"Sure. So long, Mr. Skinner." He watched the man leave the bar.
+
+Then he finished his own drink and went back into the lobby and got a
+phone. Ten minutes later, a friend of his who was a detective on the Los
+Angeles police force had promised to check into Mr. Samuel Skinner.
+Elshawe particularly wanted to know what he had been doing in the past
+three years and very especially what he had been doing in the past year.
+The cop said he'd find out. There was probably nothing to it, Elshawe
+reflected, but a reporter who doesn't follow up accidentally dropped
+hints isn't much of a reporter.
+
+He came out of the phone booth, fired up his pipe again, and strolled
+back to the bar for one more drink before he went back to Porter's
+ranch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Malcom Porter took one of the darts from the half dozen he held in his
+left hand and hurled it viciously at the target board hung on the far
+wall of the room.
+
+_Thunk!_
+
+"Four ring at six o'clock," he said in a tight voice.
+
+_Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!_
+
+The other five darts followed in rapid succession. As he threw each one,
+Porter snapped out a word. "They ... can't ... stop ... Malcom ...
+Porter!" He glared at the board "Two bull's-eyes; three fours, and a
+three. Twenty-five points. You owe me a quarter, Elshawe."
+
+The reporter handed him a coin. "Two bits it is. What can you do,
+Porter? They've got you sewed up tight. If you try to take off, they'll
+cart you right back to The Rock--if the Army doesn't shoot you down
+first. Do you want to spend the next ten years engrossed in the scenic
+beauties of San Francisco Bay?"
+
+"No. And I won't, either."
+
+"Not if the Army gets you. I can see the epitaph now:
+
+    _Malcom Porter, with vexation,
+    Thought he could defy the nation.
+    He shot for space with great elation--
+    Now he's dust and radiation._
+
+Beneath it, they'll engrave a spaceship argent with A-bombs rampant on a
+field sable."
+
+Porter didn't take offense. He grinned. "What are you griping about? It
+would make a great story."
+
+"Sure it would," Elshawe agreed. "But not for me. I don't write the
+obituary column."
+
+"You know what I like about you, Elshawe?"
+
+"Sure. I lose dart games to you."
+
+"That, yes. But you really sound worried. That means two things. One:
+You like me. Two: You believe that my ship actually will take off.
+That's more than any of those other reporters who have been prowling
+around and phoning in do."
+
+Elshawe shrugged silently and puffed at his pipe. Malcom Porter's ego
+was showing through. He was wrong on two counts. Elshawe didn't like
+him; the man's arrogance and his inflated opinion of himself as a
+scientific genius didn't sit well with the reporter. And Elshawe didn't
+really believe there was anything but a rocket motor in that hull
+outside. A new, more powerful kind of rocket perhaps--otherwise Porter
+wouldn't be trying to take a one-stage rocket to the Moon. But a rocket,
+nonetheless.
+
+"I don't want to go back to prison," Porter continued, "but I'll risk
+that if I have to. But I won't risk death just yet. Don't worry; the
+Army won't know I'm even gone until I'm halfway to the Moon."
+
+"Foo!" said Elshawe. "Every radar base from Albuquerque to the Mexican
+border has an antenna focused on the air above this ranch. The minute
+you get above those mountains, they'll have a fix on you, and a minute
+after that, they'll have you bracketed with Cobras.
+
+"Why don't you let the Government inspectors look it over and give you
+an O.K.? What makes you think they're all out to steal your invention?"
+
+"Oh, they won't _steal_ it," Porter said bitterly. "Heaven's-to-Betsy
+_no_! But this invention of mine will mean that the United States of
+America will be in complete control of the planets and the space
+between. When the Government wants a piece of property, they try to buy
+it at their price; if they can't do that, they condemn it and pay the
+owner what they think it's worth--not what the owner thinks it's worth.
+The same thing applies here; they'd give me what they thought I ought to
+have--in ten years or so. Look what happened to Fermi.
+
+"No, Elshawe; when the Government comes begging to me for this
+invention, they can have it--on _my_ terms."
+
+"Going to keep it a secret, eh? You can't keep a thing like that secret.
+Look what happened with atomic energy after World War Two. We kept it a
+secret from the Russians, didn't we? Fine lot of good that did us. As
+soon as they knew it was possible, they went to work on it. Nature
+answers any questions you ask her if you ask her the right way. As soon
+as the Government sees that your spaceship works, they'll put some of
+their bright physicists to work on it, and you'll be in the same
+position as you would have been if you'd showed it to them in the first
+place. Why risk your neck?"
+
+Porter shook his head. "The analogy isn't valid. Suppose someone had
+invented the A-bomb in 1810. It would have been a perfectly safe secret
+because there wasn't a scientist on Earth who included such a thing as
+atomic energy in his philosophy. And, believe me, this drive of mine is
+just as far ahead of contemporary scientific philosophy as atomic energy
+was ahead of Napoleon's scientists.
+
+"Suppose I told you that the fuel my ship uses is a gas lighter than
+hydrogen. It isn't, but suppose I told you so. Do you think any
+scientist today could figure out how it worked? No. They _know_ that
+there's no such thing as a gas with a lighter atomic weight than
+hydrogen. They know it so well that they wouldn't even bother to
+consider the idea.
+
+"My invention is so far ahead of present-day scientific thought that no
+scientists except myself could have even considered the idea."
+
+"O.K.; O.K.," Elshawe said. "So you're going to get yourself shot down
+to prove your point."
+
+Porter grinned lopsidedly. "Not at all. You're still thinking in terms
+of a rocket. Sure--if I used a rocket, they'd knock me down fast, just
+as soon as I lifted above the mountains. But I don't have to do that.
+All I have to do is get a few feet of altitude and hug the ground all
+the way to the Pacific coast. Once I get out in the middle of the
+Pacific, I can take off straight up without being bothered at all."
+
+"All right. If your machine will do it," the reporter said, trying to
+hide his skepticism.
+
+"You still think I've got some kind of rocket, don't you?" Porter asked
+accusingly. He paused a moment, then, as if making a sudden decision, he
+said: "Look, Elshawe, I trust you. I'm going to show you the inside of
+that ship. I won't show you my engines, but I _will_ prove to you that
+there are no rocket motors in her. That way, when you write up the
+story, you'll be able to say that you have first-hand knowledge of that
+fact. O.K.?"
+
+"It's up to you," the reporter said. "I'd like to see it."
+
+"Come along," said Malcom Porter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Elshawe followed Porter out to the field, feeling rather grateful that
+he was getting something to work on. They walked across the field, past
+the two gun-toting men in Levis that Porter had guarding the ship.
+Overhead, the stars were shining brightly through the thin mountain air.
+Elshawe glanced at his wrist watch. It was a little after ten p.m.
+
+He helped Porter wheel the ramp up to the door of the ship and then
+followed him up the steps. Porter unlocked the door and went inside. The
+Grumman had been built to cruise in the high stratosphere, so it was as
+air-tight as a submarine.
+
+Porter switched on the lights. "Go on in."
+
+The reporter stepped into the cabin of the ship and looked around. It
+had been rebuilt, all right; it didn't look anything like the inside of
+a normal stratojet.
+
+"Elshawe."
+
+"Yeah?" The reporter turned to look at Porter, who was standing a little
+behind him. He didn't even see the fist that arced upward and smashed
+into his jaw. All he saw was a blaze of light, followed by darkness.
+
+The next thing he knew, something was stinging in his nostrils. He
+jerked his head aside, coughing. The smell came again. Ammonia.
+
+"Wake up, Elshawe," Porter was saying. "Have another whiff of these
+smelling salts and you'll feel better."
+
+Elshawe opened his eyes and looked at the bigger man. "I'm awake. Take
+that stuff away. What's the idea of slugging me?"
+
+"I was afraid you might not come willingly," Porter said apologetically.
+"I needed a witness, and I figured you'd do better than anyone else."
+
+Elshawe tried to move and found that he was tied to the seat and
+strapped in with a safety belt. "What's this for?" he asked angrily. His
+jaw still hurt.
+
+"I'll take that stuff off in a few minutes. I know I can trust you, but
+I want you to remember that I'm the only one who can pilot this ship. If
+you try anything funny, neither one of us will get back alive. I'll let
+you go as soon as we get up to three hundred miles."
+
+Elshawe stared at him. "Where are we?"
+
+"Heading out toward mid-Pacific. I headed south, to Mexico, first. We're
+over open water now, headed toward Baja California, so I put on the
+autopilot. As soon as we get out over the ocean, we can really make
+time. You can watch the sun come up in the west."
+
+"And then?" Elshawe felt dazed.
+
+"And then we head straight up. For empty space."
+
+Elshawe closed his eyes again. He didn't even want to think about it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"... As you no doubt heard," Terrence Elshawe dictated into the phone,
+"Malcom Porter made good his threat to take a spaceship of his own
+devising to the Moon. Ham radios all over North America picked up his
+speech, which was made by spreading the beam from an eighty-foot
+diameter parabolic reflector and aiming it at Earth from a hundred
+thousand miles out. It was a collapsible reflector, made of thin foil,
+like the ones used on space stations. Paragraph.
+
+"He announced that the trip was made with the co-operation of the United
+States Space Force, and that it represented a major breakthrough in the
+conquest of space. He--"
+
+"Just a sec," Winstein's voice broke in. "Is that the truth? Was he
+really working with the Space Force?"
+
+"Hell, no," said Elshawe. "But they'll have to claim he was now. Let me
+go on."
+
+"Shoot."
+
+"... He also beamed a message to the men on Moon Base One, telling them
+that from now on they would be able to commute back and forth from Luna
+to Earth, just as simply as flying from New York to Detroit. Paragraph.
+
+"What followed was even more astounding. At tremendous acceleration,
+Malcom Porter and Terrence Elshawe, your reporter, headed for Mars.
+Inside Porter's ship, there is no feeling of acceleration except for a
+steady, one-gee pull which makes the passenger feel as though he is on
+an ordinary airplane, even though the spaceship may be accelerating at
+more than a hundred gravities. Paragraph.
+
+"Porter's ship circled Mars, taking photographs of the Red Planet--the
+first close-ups of Mars to be seen by the human race. Then, at the same
+tremendous rate of speed, Porter's ship returned to Earth. The entire
+trip took less than thirty-six hours. According to Porter, improved
+ships should be able to cut that time down considerably. Paragraph."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Have you got those pics?" Winstein cut in.
+
+"Sure. Porter gave me an exclusive in return for socking me. It was
+worth it. Remember back in the Twenties, when the newspapermen talked
+about a scoop? Well, we've got the biggest scoop of the century."
+
+"Maybe," said Winstein. "The Government hasn't made any announcement
+yet. Where's Porter?"
+
+"Under arrest, where'd you think? After announcing that he would land on
+his New Mexico ranch, he did just that. As soon as he stepped out, a
+couple of dozen Government agents grabbed him. Violation of parole--he
+left the state without notifying his parole officer. But they couldn't
+touch me, and they knew it.
+
+"Here's another bit of news for your personal information. A bomb went
+off inside the ship after it landed and blew the drive to smithereens.
+The only information is inside Porter's head. He's got the Government
+where the short hair grows."
+
+"Looks like it. See here, Terry; you get all the information you can and
+be back here by Saturday. You're going to go on the Weekend Report."
+
+"Me? I'm no actor. Let Maxon handle it."
+
+"No. This is hot. You're an eye-witness. Maxon will interview you.
+Understand?"
+
+"O.K.; you're the boss, Ole. Anything else?"
+
+"Not right now, but if anything more comes up, call in."
+
+"Right. 'Bye." He hung up and leaned back in his chair, cocking his feet
+up on the desk. It was Malcom Porter's desk and Malcom Porter's chair.
+He was sitting in the Big Man's office, just as though he owned it. His
+jaw still hurt a little, but he loved every ache of it. It was hard to
+remember that he had ever been angry with Porter.
+
+Just before they had landed, Porter had said: "They'll arrest me, of
+course. I knew that when I left. But I think I can get out of it. There
+will be various kinds of Government agents all over the place, but they
+won't find anything. I've burned all my notebooks.
+
+"I'll instruct my attorney that you're to have free run of the place so
+that you can call in your story."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The phone rang. Elshawe grabbed up the receiver and said: "Malcom
+Porter's residence." He wished that they had visiphones out in the
+country; he missed seeing the face of the person he was talking to.
+
+"Let me talk to Mr. Terrence Elshawe, please," said the voice at the
+other end. "This is Detective Lieutenant Martin of the Los Angeles
+Police Department."
+
+"This is me, Marty."
+
+"Good! Boy, have I had trouble getting to you! I had to make it an
+official call before the phone company would put the call through. How
+does it feel to be notorious?"
+
+"Great. What's new?"
+
+"I got the dope on that Skinner fellow. I suppose you still want it? Or
+has success gone to your head?"
+
+Elshawe had almost forgotten about Skinner. "Shoot," he said.
+
+The police officer rattled off Samuel Skinner's vital statistics--age,
+sex, date and place of birth, and so on. Then: "He lived in New York
+until 1977. Taught science for fifteen years at a prep school there.
+He--"
+
+"Wait a second," Elshawe interrupted. "When was he born? Repeat that."
+
+"March fourth, nineteen-thirty."
+
+"Fifty-three," Elshawe said, musingly. "Older than he looks. O.K.; go
+on."
+
+"He retired in '77 and came to L.A. to live. He--"
+
+"Retired at the age of forty-seven?" Elshawe asked incredulously.
+
+"That's right. Not on a teacher's pension, though. He's got some kind of
+annuity from a New York life insurance company. Pays pretty good, too.
+He gets a check for two thousand dollars on the third of every month. I
+checked with his bank on that. Nice, huh?"
+
+"Very nice. Go on."
+
+"He lives comfortably. No police record. Quiet type. One servant, a
+Chinese, lives with him. Sort of combination of valet and secretary.
+
+"As far as we can tell, he has made four trips in the past three years.
+One in June of '79, one in June of '80, one in June of '81, and this
+year he made the fourth one. In '79, he went to Silver City, New Mexico.
+In '80 and '81, he went to Hawaii. This year, he went to Silver City
+again. Mean anything to you?"
+
+"Not yet," Elshawe said. "Are you paying for this call, or is the City
+of Los Angeles footing the bill?"
+
+"Neither. You are."
+
+"Then shut up and let me think for a minute." After less than a minute,
+he said: "Martin, I want some more data on that guy. I'm willing to pay
+for it. Should I hire a private detective?"
+
+"That's up to you. I can't take any money for it, naturally--but I'm
+willing to nose around a little more for you if I can. On the other
+hand, I can't put full time in on it. There's a reliable detective
+agency here in L.A.-- Drake's the guy's name. Want me to get in touch
+with him?"
+
+"I'd appreciate it. Don't tell him who wants the information or that it
+has any connection with Porter. Get--"
+
+"Hold it, Terry ... just a second. You know that if I uncover any
+indication of a crime, all bets are off. The information goes to my
+superiors, not to you."
+
+"I know. But I don't think there's any crime involved. You work it from
+your end and send me the bills. O.K.?"
+
+"Fair enough. What more do you want?"
+
+Elshawe told him.
+
+When the phone call had been completed, Elshawe sat back and made clouds
+of pipe smoke, which he stared at contemplatively. Then he made two
+calls to New York--one to his boss and another to a private detective
+agency he knew he could trust.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Malcom Porter case quickly became a _cause celebre_. Somebody
+goofed. Handled properly, the whole affair might have been hushed up;
+the Government would have gotten what it wanted, Porter would have
+gotten what _he_ wanted, and everyone would have saved face. But some
+bureaucrat couldn't see beyond the outer surface of his spectacle
+lenses, and some other bureaucrat failed to stop the thing in time.
+
+"Gall, gall, and bitter, bitter wormwood," said Oler Winstein, perching
+himself on the edge of Terry Elshawe's desk.
+
+"You don't Gallic, bitter, wormy, or wooden. What's up?"
+
+"Got a call from Senator Tallifero. He wants to know if you'll consent
+to appear before the Joint Congressional Committee for Investigating
+Military Affairs. I get the feeling that if you say 'no,' they'll send a
+formal invitation--something on the order of a subpoena."
+
+Elshawe sighed. "Oh, well. It's news, anyway. When do they want me to be
+in Washington?"
+
+"Tomorrow. Meanwhile, Porter, of course, is under arrest and in close
+confinement. Confusion six ways from Sunday." He shook his head. "I
+don't understand why they just didn't pat him on the back, say they'd
+been working on this thing all along, and cover it up fast."
+
+"Too many people involved," Elshawe said, putting his cold pipe in the
+huge ashtray on his desk. "The Civil Aeronautics crowd must have had a
+spotter up in those mountains; they had a warrant out for his arrest
+within an hour after we took off. They also notified the parole board,
+who put out an all-points bulletin immediately. The Army and the Air
+Force were furious because he'd evaded their radar net. Porter stepped
+on so many toes so hard that it was inevitable that one or more would
+yell before they realized it would be better to keep their mouths shut."
+
+"Well, you get up there and tell your story, and I dare say he'll come
+out of it."
+
+"Sure he will. They know he's got something, and they know they have to
+have it. But he's going to go through hell before they give it to him."
+
+Winstein slid off the desk and stood up. "I hope so. He deserves it. By
+the way, it's too bad you couldn't get a story out of that Sam Skinner
+character."
+
+"Yeah. But there's nothing to it. After all, even the FBI tried to find
+out if there was anyone at all besides Porter who might know anything
+about it. No luck. Not even the technicians who worked with him knew
+anything useful. Skinner didn't know anything at all." He told the lie
+with a perfectly straight face. He didn't like lying to Winstein, but
+there was no other way. He hoped he wouldn't have to lie to the
+Congressional Committee; perjury was not something he liked doing. The
+trouble was, if he told the truth, he'd be worse off than if he lied.
+
+He took the plane that night for Washington, and spent the next three
+days answering questions while he tried to keep his nerves under
+control. Not once did they even approach the area he wanted them to
+avoid.
+
+On the plane back, he relaxed, closed his eyes, and, for the first time
+in days, allowed himself to think about Mr. Samuel Skinner.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The reports from the two detective agencies on the East and West Coasts
+hadn't made much sense separately, but together they added up to enough
+to have made it worth Elshawe's time to go to Los Angeles and tackle
+Samuel Skinner personally. He had called Skinner and made an
+appointment; Skinner had invited him out to his home.
+
+It was a fairly big house, not too new, and it sat in the middle of a
+lot that was bigger than normal for land-hungry Los Angeles.
+
+Elshawe ran through the scene mentally. He could see Skinner's mild face
+and hear his voice saying: "Come in, Mr. Elshawe."
+
+They went into the living room, and Skinner waved him toward a chair.
+"Sit down. Want some coffee?"
+
+"Thanks; I'd appreciate it." While Skinner made coffee, the reporter
+looked around the room. It wasn't overly showy, but it showed a sort of
+subdued wealth. It was obvious that Mr. Skinner wasn't lacking in
+comforts.
+
+Skinner brought in the coffee and then sat down, facing Elshawe, in
+another chair. "Now," he said bluntly, "what was that remark you made on
+the phone about showing up Malcom Porter as a phony? I understood that
+you actually went to Mars on his ship. Don't you believe the evidence of
+your own senses?"
+
+"I don't mean that kind of phony," Elshawe said. "And you know it. I'll
+come to the point. I know that Malcom Porter didn't invent the
+Gravito-Inertial Differential Polarizer. _You_ did."
+
+Skinner's eyes widened. "Where did you get that information?"
+
+"I can't tell you my sources, Mr. Skinner. Not yet, anyhow. But I have
+enough information to tell me that you're the man. It wouldn't hold up
+in court, but, with the additional information you can give me, I think
+it will."
+
+Skinner looked baffled, as if not knowing what to say next.
+
+"Mr. Skinner," Elshawe went on, "a research reporter has to have a
+little of the crusader in him, and maybe I've got more than most. You've
+discovered one of the greatest things in history--or invented it,
+whatever you want to call it. You deserve to go down in history along
+with Newton, Watt, Roentgen, Edison, Einstein, Fermi, and all the rest.
+
+"But somehow Malcom Porter stole your invention and he intends to take
+full credit for it. Oh, I know he's paid you plenty of money not to make
+any fuss, and he probably thinks you couldn't prove anything, anyway.
+But you don't have to be satisfied with his conscience money any more.
+With the backing of Magnum Telenews, you can blow Mister Glory-hound
+Porter's phony setup wide open and take the credit you deserve."
+
+Skinner didn't look at all the way Elshawe had expected. Instead, he
+frowned a little and said: "I'm glad you came, Mr. Elshawe. I didn't
+realize that there was enough evidence to connect me with his project."
+But he didn't look exactly overjoyed.
+
+"Well," Elshawe said tentatively, "if you'll just answer a few
+questions--"
+
+"Just a minute, Mr. Elshawe. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions
+first?"
+
+"Go ahead."
+
+Skinner leaned forward earnestly. "Mr. Elshawe, who deserves credit for
+an invention? Who deserves the money?"
+
+"Why ... why, the inventor, of course."
+
+"The inventor? Or the man who gives it to humanity?"
+
+"I ... don't quite follow you."
+
+He leaned back in his chair again. "Mr. Elshawe, when I invented the
+Polarizer, I hadn't the remotest idea of what I'd invented. I taught
+general science in the high school Malcom Porter went to, and I had a
+lab in my basement. Porter was a pretty bright boy, and he liked to come
+around to my lab and watch me putter around. I had made this gadget--it
+was a toy for children as far as I was concerned. I didn't have any idea
+of its worth. It was just a little gadget that hopped up into the air
+and floated down again. Cute, but worthless, except as a novelty. And it
+was too expensive to build it as a novelty. So I forgot about it.
+
+"Years later, Porter came around to me and offered to buy it. I dug it
+out of the junk that was in my little workshop and sold it to him.
+
+"A couple of years after that, he came back. He said that he'd invented
+something. After beating all around the bush, he finally admitted that
+his invention was a development of my little toy. He offered me a
+million dollars if I'd keep my mouth shut and forget all about the
+thing."
+
+"And you accepted?" Elshawe asked incredulously.
+
+"Certainly! I made him buy me a tax-paid annuity that pays me more than
+enough to get by on. I don't want wealth, Mr. Elshawe--just comfort. And
+that's why I gave it to him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I don't follow you."
+
+"Let me tell you about Malcom Porter. He is one of that vast horde of
+people who want to be _someone_. They want to be respected and looked up
+to. But they either can't, or won't, take the time to learn the basics
+of the field they want to excel in. The beautiful girl who wants to be
+an actress without bothering to learn to act; the young man who wants to
+be a judge without going through law school, or be a general without
+studying military tactics; and Malcom Porter, the boy who wanted to be
+a great scientist--but didn't want to take the trouble to learn
+science."
+
+Elshawe nodded. He was thinking of the "artists" who splatter up clean
+canvas and call it "artistic self-expression." And the clodheads who
+write disconnected, meaningless prose and claim that it's free verse.
+The muddleminds who forget that Picasso learned to paint within the
+strict limits of classical art before he tried new methods, and that
+James Joyce learned to handle the English language well before he wrote
+"Finnegan's Wake."
+
+"On the other hand," Skinner continued, "I am ... well, rather a shy
+man. As soon as Malcom told me what the device would do when it was
+properly powered, I knew that there would be trouble. I am not a
+fighter, Mr. Elshawe. I have no desire to spend time in prison or be
+vilified in the news or called a crackpot by orthodox scientists.
+
+"I don't want to fight Malcom's claim, Mr. Elshawe. Don't you see, he
+_deserves_ the credit! In the first place, he recognized it for what it
+was. If he hadn't, Heaven only knows how long it would have been before
+someone rediscovered it. In the second place, he has fought and fought
+hard to give it to humanity. He has suffered in prison and spent
+millions of dollars to get the Polarizer into the hands of the United
+States Government. He has, in fact, worked harder and suffered more than
+if he'd taken the time and trouble to get a proper education. And it got
+him what he wanted; I doubt that he would have made a very good
+scientist, anyway.
+
+"Porter deserves every bit of credit for the Polarizer. I am perfectly
+happy with the way things are working out."
+
+Elshawe said: "But what if the FBI gets hold of the evidence I have?"
+
+"That's why I have told you the truth, Mr. Elshawe," Skinner said
+earnestly. "I want you to destroy that evidence. I would deny flatly
+that I had anything to do with the Polarizer, in any case. And that
+would put an end to any inquiry because no one would believe that I
+would deny inventing something like that. But I would just as soon that
+the question never came up. I would rather that there be no whisper
+whatever of anything like that."
+
+He paused for a moment, then, very carefully, he said: "Mr. Elshawe, you
+have intimated that the inventor of the Polarizer deserves some kind of
+reward. I assure you that the greatest reward you could give me would be
+to help me destroy all traces of any connection with the device. Will
+you do that, Mr. Elshawe?"
+
+Elshawe just sat silently in the chair for long minutes, thinking.
+Skinner didn't interrupt; he simply waited patiently.
+
+After about ten minutes, Elshawe put his pipe carefully on a nearby
+table and reached down to pick up his briefcase. He handed it to
+Skinner.
+
+"Here. It contains all the evidence I have. Including, I might say, the
+recording of our conversation here. Just take the tape out of the
+minirecorder. A man like you deserves whatever reward he wants. Take it,
+Mr. Skinner."
+
+"Thanks," said Skinner softly, taking the briefcase.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And, on the plane winging back to New York from the Congressional
+investigation, Mr. Terrence Elshawe sighed softly. He was glad none of
+the senators had asked anything about Skinner, because he knew he would
+certainly have had to tell the truth.
+
+And he knew, just as certainly, that he would have been in a great deal
+more hot water than Porter had been. Because Malcom Porter was going to
+become American Hero Number One, and Terry Elshawe would have ended up
+as the lying little sneak who had tried to destroy the reputation of the
+great Malcom Porter.
+
+Which, all things considered, would have been a hell of a note.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+    This etext was produced from _Astounding Science Fiction_ September
+    1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
+    copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
+    typographical errors have been corrected without note.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of By Proxy, by Gordon Randall Garrett
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